Provisions of the New Church

People should go to church because they want to - not out of any sense of obligation. Church should be a place where we are refreshed - it should provide an invaluable service to the community - emphasize invaluable. People should love it so much that they are disappointed if they miss a week.

The current church format aims high but misses the mark every time. I have divided the current provisions of the Church into the following categories:

teaching

worship

social action

children's education

community building

teaching

I will go more in depth on this later, but the Church of the future is not going to be a community of people who believe the same thing. This is the primary failure of the current Church. Beliefs are too personal and too varied to bind a community based on beliefs alone.

The secondary failure of the present church lies in its insistance on subjecting the Flock to mass oration every week. A speech (or sermon or lecture if you will) is good every once in a while, but to do this kind of thing every week is simply unoriginal and boring. It's too consistant - too static - and we've been at it for hundreds of years. This needs a good shakeup.

The Christian Church will speak of being "fed" spiritually. I would like to speak of "soul sharpening." Church should help us stay sharp. Teaching need not be ethereal or spiritual on a regular basis, but it must always be RELAVENT. I envision a Church where teaching ALMOST ALWAYS occurs in small groups with a big church-wide assembly coming only once every few months or so.

worship

Well what the hell is "worship" anyway? From my experience, "worship" in the Christian church means "singing hymns" or "doing responsive readings." And I have never felt more plastic and artificial as when I have participated in Christian "worship."

I equate true "worship" with letting go of one's surroundings and becoming absorbed in something so entrancing that the mind is completely given over. The big Gospel rave-ups in the African American church do this - one is generally not given to shout "Amen!" in many other settings. Buddhist chant is an excellent example of this. A rock concert. Watching the ocean. Watching a fire burn. Saying fifty "Hail Mary's." Singing your heart out in the shower. These all acheive a similar effect - some stronger than others.

We are, of course, talking about "art" in one form or another. Granted, it would be hard to categorize "watching to ocean" as art, but when one uses the ocean as an experiential medium, yes (in a true John Cage fashion), it becomes art. Art has an astonishing effect on people. It agitates, it provokes, it refreshes. Art MUST be an integral part of the New Church. In fact, I would venture that the New Church is in many ways a community art center that thinks it's a church.

social action

Organized religion has historically done a lot of damage. From the Crusades to the Spanish Inquisition to the Salem Witch Trials to the nutball on the street telling everyone they're going to hell. But they have done a few things right - notably motivating people to social action. The abolitionist movement in America (for example) began among church congregations and become stronger with the support of church communities. That isn't to say that non-church goers aren't socially active, only that the average person is more likely than otherwise to become active in social issues (or charities or social change) if they are part of a community devoted to these things.

There comes an inevitable argument about the Church's role in politics. With the mainstream Church's alignment with the political right, I feel (perhaps retributively) that there's nothing wrong with The New Church being aligned with the political left. But this doesn't sit too well with me. I'll have to revisit that later.

children's education

My god are we in need of a visionary in this regard! The need here is so urgent and I haven't a clue where to begin, frankly.

community building

Probably the most important element of the New Church. There are many people who go to church ONLY for this aspect - to be in community with other like-minded people. To have a support mechanism. To know other people in the community and to be there for them when they are grieving and help them when they are sick or in trouble.

Here is where the role of a "pastor" comes in. A pastor is there, not necessarily to be a teacher, but to be the "glue" of the community. Making sure that the elderly are looked after. Making sure the sick are attended to. Plugging the teenager who needs guidence in with a good mentor. Helping motivate people who don't realize their strengths to be of service to others in the community. The pastor in this case is a networking mastermind who knows EVERYBODY in the congregation. Ideally it'd be good if there were a TEAM of pastors who have these duties as their sole purpose.

Mark

“Everyone in America is Protestant - even the Catholics”

I was at a Thomas Pynchon literary conferrence in Antwerp when I heard Brian McHale read a paper on angels as represented in Pynchon's work (one of the passages he referred to can be read here). And he made a passing remark which I have never forgotten - "Everyone in America is Protestant - even the Catholics."

That little remark had a profound affect on me for it explained to me quite a number of things. I had been living in Korea at the time where Confucian thinking is omnipresent. Yet no one was really a "Confucian." And Confucius was not a religious leader; he was a politician and a reformer. So among the Korean population, whether they were practicing Buddhists, Christians, agnostics, or just incredibly superstitious, there was an identifiable Confucian underscore to all of their thoughts, actions, and motivations.

Mark

The same is true in mainstream American culture. We are saturated with Christian (or Protestant) ethics and ideas. And we are so saturated with the Bible that regular Christian concepts or stories do not even require much explanation. Most of us are familiar with

David and Goliath

The Garden of Eden

what a "Christ-figure" is

what a "Judas" is

crucifixion

In 1994, I came to a conscious decision in my life that I simply could not continue to be a Christian with any sense of integrity to myself. If I had continued, it would have been an act. It was a very troubling time for me for a long list of reasons. But one of the reasons was that I felt completely groundless; I felt as though I had been totally cut off from my past. It is only now - nearly a decade later - that I have been able to reconcile that yes, I still am the same person I always had been -- AND that there really was a lot of good that came out of that time in my development.

I believe in a global society. I believe in tolerance and respect. I believe that education about other people and other faiths is important. I believe firmly that it is better to talk in terms of "we" than in "us and them." At the same time, I cannot deny who I am and the culture I was raised in. And I still feel a sense of exhileration when I read certain passages of the Bible - ("For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God..." Romans 8:38-39). took me a while to figure out that I am allowed to like these things even if I don't believe them. They are beautiful and completely "like-worthy."

And I am persuaded that there is a massive contigency of people that want to belong to a spiritual community, have serious problems with the Christian church, and find other "spiritual" communities to be either too weird, too creepy, or too full of themselves to be taken seriously.

There is a case to be made for the Unitarian Universalist Church, but I still contend that they need to go further. In the admittedly small number of UU churches I have visited, the congregation appears to be a community of "angry ex-Christians." And I can absolutely attest to ex-Christians needing time to work through things, but this should not be the bond of the community.

(And furthermore, the Unitarian Churches that I have seen seem more like carbon copies of your basic Christian churches with a different script - the architecture, the organ, the hymnals, etc.)

We have a Bible that much of us seem to know. What other single text is out there that most Americans are THAT familiar with? Not even Shakespeare comes close. We are already unified by our relative familiarity with it; why not use it as a teaching text? Discuss it. Learn from it. Disagree with it when necessary - and become a closer community by disagreeing with it. Not to say that it is the ONLY text to use, but there are compelling reasons to use it.

There needs to be a new way to meet the spiritual needs of the people which is both positive and effective. At the moment, I don't feel this exists.

Mark

Why Are You Doing This?

I was raised in the Christian Church. I used to be so immersed in things Christian that it dominated the whole of my being - the entirety of my lifestyle from my early adolescence to my early 20's. It was in my early 20's that I came to a set of beliefs that have little to do with comtemporary Christianity -- grounded more in humanisdm and agnosticism. But I cannot seem to escape the pull of Christianity; I still love spiritual issues. I still listen to Christian music. I still feel the value of religious teaching. And I still really dig the Christian Bible and still find it useful for investigating spiritual matters.

"Well, dumbass," you may say, "why not get involved with the Unitarian Universalist church? That seems right up your alley!"

Well, I have tried the Unitarian Church and, y'know, they don't really go far enough. Much of my experience with the Unitarians has been reactionary (if you will) to Christianity. many Unitarians are not so much Unitarian as they are not Christian. There MUST be a religious or spiritual way for people to come together that is focused on the postive spiritual aspects of being WITHOUT sacrificing one's personal intellectual growth in the process. We don't need a poltically liberal version of the current church model. We need a whole new way of thinking about nurturing an intelligent spiritual community.

These writings are not so much essays as journal entries for me to work through what the New Church in America will look like.

Who knows? It may all come to nothing after all. Maybe the whole pursuit is worthless; but I am so drawn to this kind of thing, I am at least going to have to chase this for awhile.

Considering the volitility of the subject matter, I am reluctant to open up with dialogue on the subject. But I am forced to contend that dialogue is ABSOLUTELY necessary for developing ANY kind of social structure. So that said, here are a few guidelines:

I don't mind dialogue with Christians on the subject, but I have done a lot of searching in my short life and am very firm in what I believe. Trying to convert me will get you nowhere.

I reserve the right not to answer you.

I also reserve the right to be wrong. I am basically just publishing my thoughts here.

Thank you!